


For Auld L'ang Syne

by charlottechill



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Holidays, Kissing, M/M, Magnificent Seven AU: ATF, Male Slash, New Year's Eve, Short, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very old tradition is renewed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Auld L'ang Syne

For Auld Lang Syne...   
..."to the good old times"

Charlotte C. Hill

As the zero hour approached and Dick Clark started trying to enliven the already drunk, already rowdy crowd in Times Square, Buck looked around Chris' darkened den and wondered what the hell he was doing here, alone with Chris on a chill New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve was a night that absolutely guaranteed sex with next to no effort, from any bar, restaurant, supermarket, gym or library in the city. And he sat here staring at Chris, who'd been strangely silent and withdrawn for the last hour, while the TV played the countdown.

Buck's mood had been going south ever since Chris clammed up. 

He'd accepted the invitation, looked forward to it even. New Year's Eve had meant something to them, once. But it was so quiet here, the air filled with a tension he hadn't expected and couldn't read.

Sighing his resignation, he picked up the champagne bottle and unwrapped the wire cage. Might as well at least be ready to drink when the ball dropped. The cork popped, and Chris turned from where he'd been standing before the cold fireplace, to look at him with unreadable eyes. 

_Spock surveying the humans_ , he thought harshly. The man seemed that far away, tonight.

Chris moved to stand beside the sofa then, and accepted the glass Buck held up. "New Year's Eve. Make you feel good?" he asked.

"Makes me feel horny," Buck grumbled.

Chris chuckled. "Dick Clark's almost at your cum countdown, isn't he?"

"Would be," Buck muttered sourly. 

"Well you know, I think I might've been there when you started that tradition," Chris said, then added in a tone that suddenly brought all the tension, all the unreadable looks, into focus, "I think tradition's good, stud. Don’t you?" 

_"Shit."_

Chris looked down at him with a far more intimate and familiar smile. "I can't believe you forgot."

On New Year's Eve fifteen years ago tonight, out of high school and on a break from college and missing each other like Buck hadn't known he could miss a guy, they'd first… even in intervening years when they'd stopped spending the evening together--well, "that" kind of together--they'd still joked about his cum countdown, and shared knowing grins and silly looks that Sarah had lumped into the realm of "guy things." 

Chris just kept smiling, indulgent, like Buck was transparent to his eyes.

"Buck."

Probably, Buck thought suddenly, he was. He looked up, licked his lips. His heart thudded in his chest and he couldn't believe how quickly his cock was trying to respond. "Thought you wanted me to forget."

"I did, once," Chris admitted, a shadow crossing his face. "But I'm done," he said. "I'm ready, if you are. I've been ready for a while, but you've been too busy chasing skirts to notice."

Buck realized his breath had caught in his throat, that he was neither inhaling nor exhaling as they stared into each other's eyes, questioning, wondering, measuring. He wasn't sure why he was angry, save for the fact that he hadn't imagined he and Chris would walk this road again. Sweet as it had been, he'd thought this door closed to them. 

"And you're just telling me now?" he growled. 

Chris half-smiled, shrugged again. "It's New Year's Eve. The night we started it. Seemed like the right night to finish it." 

"I don't want--" Buck started, then stopped, pissed at himself. He wasn't exactly the poster child for long walks and fidelity. But he didn't want to make love to Chris, and open all that up again, and then try to stuff it back into a corner of his heart tomorrow and pretend it hadn't happened. They'd known each other too long, and it had been hard enough to do that the first time. 

"I know what you want," Chris said, nodding decisively. He shrugged, and his smile softened. "I'm ready."

Noise, like rushing wind, assaulted his ears. Some tiny part of his brain registered that it was the crowd on the television. 

"For what?" he barely whispered the words. His mouth was dry.

Chris chortled a little, and shook his head. It was a fond gesture. Chris opened his mouth to speak, but the increase in noise from the TV distracted him.

Chris' head turned toward the television. "Ball's about to drop," he said inconsequentially. But before Buck could draw breath to demand an answer, Chris looked back, his eyes expectant, hopeful. "I thought waiting until now, well, you'd think that was romantic." He smiled again, self-deprecating this time, and Buck watched the anxiety rise. It was painfully clear that Chris had been sure of himself, going into this, that it hadn't occurred to him until this minute that Buck might say no.

"When did you know?" Buck whispered, poking at it a little, testing the water before he threw his heart in for the last time. Dick Clark's voice buzzed like an irritating mosquito, off to his right. 

"I always knew, Buck. Knew how I felt, I mean. When did I decide to put all that macho insecurity bullshit behind me and convince myself I could walk down a street with you, and either laugh at or beat the shit out of somebody who thought they had a right to judge me?" He shrugged. "Sarah taught me that. She taught me the pleasure of family, and that it shouldn't matter what package home came in." 

"Ten!" The roar of hundreds of thousands of drunks in Times Square startled Buck so badly he flinched. 

"So the only question," Chris went on, 

"Nine!"

"...is whether or not I've fucked up and left it too long."

"Eight!"

Buck's brain sputtered. Home. Family. Too long? No. Never that.

"Seven!"

It didn't matter a damn. Not as long as Chris meant it, and one hard look at those soft green eyes confirmed that fact.

"Six!"

"No, Chris, you haven't."

"Five!"

Dick Clark's voice kept inserting itself into his field of focus, sputtering meaningless bullshit to describe a scene anybody with eyes could watch.

"Four!"

The green eyes softened further, and Chris took one small step forward.

"Three!" 

"Damn," Buck muttered, for wont of something better to say. He'd never been married, never expected to be, had worn out the fantasy of finding the right woman, and known for years that Chris was his family. 

"Two!"

That they'd become family in body again, and stay that way from here on out--

"One!" The crowd went wild, balloons dropped and fireworks exploded.

Buck wasn't paying much attention to the TV. 

Chris had taken another step, Buck had reached out, and now he found himself tumbled back onto the sofa with a lap full of Chris Larabee, his lover's tongue gently trying to nudge his away from Chris' tonsils. The taste was the same, Crest toothpaste and dark, mossy earth and something as sharp and addictive as fine whiskey, and Buck sucked gently on Chris' working tongue, trying to draw in the taste. His hands had slid up Chris' back, under the sweatshirt already, kneading at warm, smooth skin. Familiar skin, it was soft and suntanned, sensitive and sexy. 

He had sworn off men for a decade, because every one, when the lights went out, reminded him of Chris. 

Chris wriggled in his lap, trying to turn without breaking the kiss; he helped, guiding a knee, holding Chris steady at the waist, and groaned when Chris straddled his legs, when the insides of Chris' thighs made a long, smooth glide up the outsides of his own. Their groins, pressed together now, sparked a fire that might take the rest of their lives to quench. 

Something about the clamor of a crowd seemed reminiscent of blood pounding in the ears, surging in the groin, of the tight-clench-muscle-twitch of orgasm, but neither of them was even close. Chris swallowed, and their lips chastely closed. They broke apart, panting gently on each other. 

"I'm losin' my touch," Buck breathed, his fingers mapping the line between skin and hair, dipping in to the soft locks here and there. Chris' hair had a stiffness about it that spoke of styling gel and forethought, and he smiled, feeling an old/new lightness in his belly, an added element to the love he'd always felt for his best friend. "I missed my countdown."

"Well," Chris said, kindly, "that's the east coast feed, you know. You've still got two hours left."

Buck laughed, delighted, and lifted his hips a little to rub against Chris' balls. Two hours, to reacquaint themselves with each other's body, to settle themselves once and for all into each other's hearts, to light a fire and feel each other up and find all the various tastes and smells and sensitive, erogenous zones once more, before old Dick replayed on Channel 7. 

Tightening his belly to raise his mouth to Chris', he barely brushed his last lover's lips, then breathed gently across the damp skin, "That's perfect."

And it was.

**Author's Note:**

> There is something entertaining about realizing I have 10-year-old fic in the fandom I still love... and that it could be new for somebody. 
> 
> Thank you: to Megan and Fiercy and Stan and C.V. and Maygra and Ellie and Joe and Julie and... because holiday stories always bring out the "family spirit" in me, and these people were a big part of my fannish family 10 years ago.


End file.
